If you’ve got some uses for them as dumb bulbs they’re one of the brightest 60 watt equivalent bulbs on the market. Sure you could buy some 75 or 100 watt equivalent but if you’ve already got these lying around you might as well use them instead of buying something. Scroll down to “The most light for your money.”
I honestly have never had a single issue with them. They always go on or off whenever I ask them to. I’ve still got about 5 in service right now as smart bulbs. I previously had around 20 but recently picked up a ton of Lifx 800 whites on clearance at Lowes and have replaced most of them. These are even brighter and can change color temperature.
Replaced all mine with GE 127xxx Z-Wave switches, even for situations where it was just connected to a single bulb, couldn’t stand them any more.
The majority of people have issues with them, they’ll drop out once in a while and despite what some may say, the hub they are connected to is completely irrelevant, they’ll do it when connected to ST, when connected to Wink or even when connected to the Hue Bridge which has to be one of the most reliable devices on the planet.
Above anything else, if the power goes out and comes back, you’re getting a face full of light if you use them in the bedroom which I used too, every smart bulb suffers this which is why I no longer use smart bulbs at all, unless I want RGB and all those are outside anyway.
Sorry, angry rant about GE Links over. They serious nearly did kill home automation for me.
2 Likes
bamarayne
(Jason "The Enabler" as deemed so by @Smart)
23
I’ve been planning on moving over to Hue for the lights, just have yet to do so.
If I’m reading this right, do the iris motion sensors trigger faster than the ecolink/gocontrol that i currently have? I always had a 3-5 second delay for rules to fire when motion was detected.
Yes, Iris PIR are faster ( and more sensitive) that the GC Z-wave. I will say I have more issues of the Iris dropping off the mesh than the GC. The Iris also like to hang up and need to be reset too. I am popping the battery in/out on at least one of them every week and have changed the batteries on them all at least once in the last 6 months. I am just now starting to replace batteries on GC PIRs after almost 2 years in service. There are also DTH issues with the Iris and the temperature is all over the place. Using same DTH one temp will be pretty close to accurate and the next update will have temp 557*, an hour later it will be -100* .
With Hue V1 hub kits on clearance and new Hue white bulbs < $15 it is well worth it to upgrade. 1 for stability and 2 you can add Hue dimmers and Taps, have local control .
bamarayne
(Jason "The Enabler" as deemed so by @Smart)
27
I used to have this same problem… Then I changed my link bulbs over to hue bulbs… Haven’t had a problem since!
Yep, I reckon because if a another ZigBee device was routing traffic through a GE Link and that Link stopped responding, it would block that other ZigBee device from working until the Link was powered down and allowed the ZigBee device to re-route around it.
It’s the reason why I have so much hatred for ZigBee to the point that I literally only have three ZigBee devices left (excluding my Hue stuff, because you know, I reckon that’s ZigBee+Magic), with the intention of removing at least two of those three out of it as well. After the Links I only want Z-Wave or WiFi.
Which brings me to my next point, I don’t know about you lot but Ecolink Z-Wave PIR sensors are probably the fastest you can get… like, instant reporting, how so? I put the jumper over the ‘TEST’ option. Doesn’t that kill battery life? Well the two Ecolink Z-Wave PIR sensor I have set like this in a high traffic area have been this way for over a year now.
Virtually instant reporting, as in, after motion stops, it only takes about a second or two to stop reporting motion back to the ST. I highly recommend them, plus they’re Z-Wave so… DOWN WITH THE ZIGBEE (I’m just kidding, I was just tainted by GE Links to hate ZigBee… ).
1 Like
bamarayne
(Jason "The Enabler" as deemed so by @Smart)
29
I have one monitor and one ecolink pir sensor… I could never get them to detect very fast. They just didn’t work for me to turn on lights.
[quote=“bamarayne, post:29, topic:56058, full:true”]I have one monitor and one ecolink pir sensor… I could never get them to detect very fast. They just didn’t work for me to turn on lights.
[/quote]
Did you set the jumper inside to the TEST position? That’s the only way to get instant reporting from it, otherwise it latches for like a minute or something.
bamarayne
(Jason "The Enabler" as deemed so by @Smart)
31
Yeah, I sure did. It would reset at 15 to 30 seconds… It was never consistent.
The problem was the detection reporting… When it finally detected motion there was several seconds lag in reporting.
Same with me. Have mine in test. Walk in the garage about 15 feet from sensor, and walk across the beam. Takes about 2-3 seconds to trigger. Same if I just walk in and stand for a couple seconds. Once the light blinks on it the lights trigger fairly quickly. Have moved that thing all over the garage to try to improve detection. Even had it right next to the door, still a couple second lag.
With my Iris, as soon as I can see it, the light blinks and the lights are on.
I am with both @desertblade and @bamarayne zwave sensors are the slowest devices. Maybe they slow down in large mesh? How many zwave devices do you have @Benji ?
I cannot think of any other plausible explanation other than our ‘seconds’ are faster than yours…
This could be a possibility, but then any of my zwave sensors are slow…Aeon, Fibaro…
Thankfully still sorta relevant since it looks like @elmattarino has the same GoControl Motion/Door sensors I do and about to install.
I got them because they’re supposed to be the same as the Ecolinks but after some of these discussions I’ve been worried they aren’t. That being said, the GoControl Motion Sensors LITERALLY say Ecolink inside…
